Brewing Controversy Over Proposal to Make Water Cheaper Than Beer

In Czech Republic, Idea Taps Strong Feelings; Birthplace of Pilsner

PRAGUE—In most restaurants and taverns across the Czech Republic, a mug of beer is, literally, cheaper than water. The country's health minister wants to change that as he tries to put Czechs on a lower-hops diet.

It won't be easy. Here in the birthplace of pilsner, beer is known as "liquid bread." Czechs drink an average of 37 gallons of the stuff per person per year, the highest per capita consumption in the world and more than double U.S. levels.

Pub patrons go through the sudsy amber liquid so fast that the nation's largest brewer, SABMiller unit Plzensky Prazdroj, maker of famed Pilsner Urquell, delivers beer with the kind of tank trucks used to haul gasoline, and pumps it into bars' storage vats.

A bartender fills a mug with beer at a a restaurant at the Pilsner Urquell brewery in Pilsen, Czech Republic. Petr David Josek/Associated Press

"Beer is like mother's milk for adults," said Marek Gollner, a 36-year-old computer programmer and regular customer at the U Zelenku pub in the Prague suburb of Zbraslav. "For a Czech, it's like wine for a Frenchman or vodka for a Russian."

Faced with such attitudes, Health Minister Leos Heger's campaign to make Bohemia a bit less bohemian is starting with baby steps.

He wants to require restaurants and bars to offer at least one nonalcoholic beverage at a price lower than that of the same amount of beer, primarily to offer teens, who can legally drink at 18, an alternative. The easiest thing to do, Dr. Heger said, would be to offer patrons pitchers of tap water.

Even that has some tavern keepers foaming.

"It ticks me off," said Eleni Atanasopulosova, 34, the manager at U Zelenku. "There are more pressing issues. People are struggling to find work. The government should do something more important."

Dr. Heger, a 64-year-old radiologist who likes to toss back a few himself, attributes such resistance to a general Czech dislike of government regulation, a legacy of the country's decades under repressive communist rule.

"It's important to speak against social engineering," Dr. Heger said. "We don't want to suppress smoking and drinking among adults. It's their right." He added: "I'm not against alcohol consumption. It just has to be reasonable."

The minister's relatively modest proposals, which also include raising the penalties for serving alcohol to minors and measures to limit indoor smoking, haven't even been approved by the cabinet yet, let alone been considered by Parliament. He hopes his latest push will spark a national conversation on the place beer holds in Czech society.

"Beer is really widespread, with very deep roots…It's a well-anchored, important part of everyday life," said Jiri Vinopal, director of the Czech Academy of Sciences' Public Opinion Research Center. "It's always been that way. Since the Middle Ages people here have made beer their primary drink."

For that reason, Mr. Vinopal said, any change in regulations affecting beer "is a very sensitive subject."

For at least a thousand years, beer has been a staple in the Czech lands, and the country's native hops are renowned for being aromatic and bitter. St. Wenceslas, a martyred 10th-century Czech nobleman, is a patron saint of brewing and malting, in addition to being the patron saint of the nation.

ENLARGE

Pilsner Urquell

When the city of Plzen, about 60 miles southwest of Prague, got its charter in 1295, its people were given the right to brew beer, helping ensure the settlement's prosperity. (In the 19th century, the city gave its name to the bottom-fermented lager made there and now known as pilsner.)

The country's oldest brewery still in operation, Prague's U Fleku, was founded in 1499. Beer was so important to the Czech political economy at that time that knights and nobles fought for and won the right to brew beer under a landmark royal decree in 1517.

Nearly half a millennium later, beer remains at the center of Czech social life. It is common for people to head to a pub after work to relax and socialize with friends. Barkeeps often don't ask customers what they would like to drink. Instead, they just plop down a glass of lager and start a tab.

At a typical local pub, a pint—500 milliliters, actually, in this metric-measuring country—costs about $1. A similar portion of water, juice or soda generally costs twice as much. Offering free tap water as at U.S. eateries is extremely rare.

At U Zelenku, a neighborhood institution for more than a century, for instance, a pint of the cheapest beer goes for 99 cents. The same size of soda water is $1.30. At the fancier Kolkovna restaurant in touristy Old Town, a pint is $2.50, while mineral water is $2.29, for a bottle less than half the size.

The Czech Hotel and Restaurant Association has criticized Dr. Heger's proposals, calling them unacceptable and saying it will fight them in court, if it comes to that. Vaclav Starek, the association's president, said the government risks over-regulating a struggling industry at the most inopportune time, with the country in the midst of a recession. "The wave of new regulations is suffocating," Mr. Starek said.

Czechs have the highest rate of alcohol consumption among children aged 13 to 15 in Europe, a rate that is also higher than that in the U.S. and Canada, according to the World Health Organization.

Dr. Heger said that regulations should be aimed at kids. "We'd like to prevent kids from smoking and drinking. It's the major task," he said. But that will require changing adults' attitudes as well, since now many ignore laws prohibiting alcohol sales to those under 18 and look the other way when teenagers are drinking.

The minister said that raising excise taxes on beer and spirits would help but said it isn't within his power to propose. And he said he has realistic expectations about the measures he is pushing for Parliament to adopt. "I can imagine the law we offer may not be successful this year," he said. "But, then, maybe next time."

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